When I try to print from OpenOffice 2.0 for Mac OS X to my Canon iP4000 color printer, it uses color ink to represent black. This wastes the color ink and fails to take advantage of the high-capacity, high-speed blank ink feature of the printer. It's also slower. I didn't realize it was doing this until used up all of the color ink, and I noticed that the printer hardly touched the black. Telling OO to print grayscale doesn't help, and OO for Mac does not bring up the Mac OS X printer dialog like everything else does.

Canon has a great knowledge base on their web site (to which they're discouraging deep links, sadly—or search engine indexing!) with several articles on the subject of the printer using color ink for black. According to their docs, the printer will intentionally use color for black when color goes unused for a while, to keep the color jets from getting clogged. Unfortunately, this doesn't explain my problem, which is clearly software-related: I can get fast black prints in all applications that use the Mac OS X print dialog. And it seems like a naïve printer controller problem that would be typical of a cross-platform app like OpenOffice.

One workaround: Use OpenOffice's Export to PDF feature, then open the PDF in Preview and print from there. If it's all black and white, or you force grayscale in the print dialog (under Quality & Media, check Grayscale Print), the document will print with fast black. Saves money and time: The Canon IPs print all-black pages as if on fire, using a high-capacity black ink cartridge that you can purchase separately from the others.